Guerbet Alcohols (GA) or Guerbet-type alcohols are used as synthetic reagents and formulation ingredients for a number of personal care and cleaning products. Guerbet Alcohols are known to have desirable physical properties such as very low melting points and low viscosities as compared to linear alcohols of similar molecular weight. See, e.g., O'Lenick, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents, vol. 4(3), 311-315, 2001.
Currently, the practice for making Guerbet-type alcohols involves either: (1) hydroformylation of α-olefins to make aldehydes that can then be dimerized and/or reduced (see, e.g., WO2010082793), or (2) the heating of alkyl alcohols (>130° C.) over basic catalyst to generate alkyl aldehydes in situ, which then dimerize and can later be reduced (see, e.g., WO2010082793). In the case of the first process, the α-olefins are generally derived from resource depleting petrochemical feedstocks, and in the case of second process, the alcohols have to be heated to high temperatures and thus significant energy is required. Therefore, an energy efficient method for the production of alkyl aldehydes and Guerbet alcohols from non-depleting resources is desired. The present invention addresses the needs.